In a few short days (July 22nd, to be exact) Gucci Mane will release his highly-anticipated new album Everybody Lookin’, his first since being released from prison after a three-year stint. A body of all-new work, the Gooch — who is well-known for essentially living in the recording studio and churning out song after song — reportedly completed the album in, quite literally, six days.
Now, former protégé and close confidante Mike WiLL Made It, who worked closely with Gucci throughout the album’s creation, revealed to FADER how it came to fruition. Currently on house arrest in Atlanta, Mike as well as producer Zaytoven took to the rapper’s sprawling mansion to craft Everybody Lookin’. Mike also revealed that the shape of the album took place while Gucci Mane was still locked up:
We were talking to each other over text. Gucci like “Man, explain the beats to me.” I’m like “I don’t want to talk your head off over this [inmate texting service] CorrLinks stuff.” He was like “Man, please talk my head off, I ain’t got nothing else to do but read this.”
So I’d be like, “This sh*t sound distorted, this shit sound like this.” He’d be like, “We gotta have this sh*t real crazy, beats knocking hard.” So I’m playing back whatever he said in text and that’s the vibe I’m going on in the studio. Whatever he said to me that’s what I was able to make. When he got out, he was hearing the beats, just like, “Oh yeah I got a song for that.” Zaytoven send over a beat, “Oh yeah I got a song for that.” Zaytoven pull up and we make a beat together, boom, wrote a song to it.
Mike also explains how he and Zaytoven first met, and revealed that they only recently did their first song together:
I kept doing what I was doing, working with the different people I was working with, building my team up. Me and Zay we really made our first beat together when we did “MFN Right.” We did do some beats for Gucci before but I don’t know if those songs ever came out.
Mike goes into great detail throughout the lengthy interview, which includes his thoughts on Everybody Lookin’:
I feel like that’s what this album is. This is a classic hip-hop album. I haven’t really [heard] an album that felt this good since Get Rich Or Die Trying. That’s what everybody searching for. Me and Gucci had certain references that we were talking about with this album: All Eyez On Me, The Chronic. He mentioned Layin Da Smack Down by Project Pat. We were just talking about different, solid albums. And we was like, “We gotta bring that solid album of today.” It has to be somebody that’s gon elevate this trap sound, this down South rap shit right now. Everybody’s doing their thing, but elevate it in a different way.
Read the entire piece here.
